Day 1: Departure

At last this day we have been looking forward to has arrived - the day we leave for our 16-day vacation to the Big Island of Hawaii. It was an early start - waking up at 2:45 AM to catch a Delta Airbus A319 for Minneapolis. Here we are at James Armstrong International Airport in Winnipeg as our friendly driver from London Limos dropped us off:

We boarded our A319 for a short one-hour flight to Minneapolis. Here we are enjoying the comforts of the first class cabin: 

A layover of about three hours in Minneapolis, most of it spent in the Delta SkyClub lounge:

Then we boarded one of Delta's beautiful Airbus A330-300 widebody jets. Here was our home for he next eight and a half hours:

Here's Dona checking out the little amenities kit Delta gave each one of us:

Connecting through Honolulu International, we had to make our way from the international & mainland terminal over to the inter-island terminal so we could catch a Hawaiian Airlines Boeing 717 to Kona. Between each terminal are these beautiful gardens:

Funny thing when you notice the terminal facility has such an open air construction. In some places the walls are open; they're not sealed from the element. Then you realize they have no winters here, so why not have open air spaces?

As we waited for our flight to Kona, we caught our first Hawaiian sunset:

A short flight to Kona, pick up our Jeep at Thrifty, then drive a familiar route to our condo. After being awake for nearly 24 hours, we finally got some sleep.